Best of Technical Support

I'm trying to use umask to
set permissions in a directory, but it doesn't allow me to set
execute. I use

umask a=rwx

and when I create a new file the permissions are
-rw-rw-rw-.

Can you give me a quick explanation of this command?
Thanks. —Ernesto Jardim, ernesto@ipimar.pt

umask
doesn't set permissions; it uses a mask to clear existing file
permissions. The umask is also used by the shell to set initial
file permissions on a newly created file. Specifically, permissions
in the umask are turned off from 0666. The default umask is
commonly 022 (in octal notation). In binary it is 000 010 010 which
is equivalent to ----w--w-. When a file is
created, the default permissions are rw-rw-rw-
(666) and after the umask is applied, they will
be rw-r--r-- (644). To set permissions, use the
chmod command.

IDE/ATAPI Support?

I have two technical questions that I can't seem to solve by
reading HOWTOs.

1) Has anything been done for the IDE/ATAPI version of the
Iomega Zip drive? Every HOWTO I have read seems to cover only the
SCSI and the parallel port versions.

2) I have an HP ScanJet 5P scanner, with complementary
Symbios one device SCSI controller. When I boot Linux, it says it
doesn't detect any SCSI hosts. Is this normal and what is the
reason behind it?
—Henk Verleye, henk@sophis.be

1) Newer kernels (like 2.0.35) support IDE/ATAPI removables.
Just include IDE/ATAPI FLOPPY support and recompile the
kernel.

2) Frankly, I don't know if this type of SCSI controller is
supported, but if it is, make sure the ncr53c8xx SCSI driver is
compiled into the kernel.

Switching Hard Drives

I have one hard drive for Linux Red Hat 5.0 and one for
Windows and want to switch them. Linux is on hda1 and Windows is on
hdb1. hdb1 is the faster of the two, and I want to move Linux to it
and put Windows on hda1. I know how to do the Windows part, but how
do I duplicate everything on hda1 to hdb1? hdb1 is a bigger hard
drive and has more than twice the speed of hda1. —Jon,
LordShroom@hempseed.com

First boot Linux, then mount hdb1 under /mnt with
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt; then, if one
partition is all you need to copy, type the following:

cp -a --one-file-system / /mnt

Wait for the copy to finish, then type
umount /mnt. If you have more than one file
system you want to copy, you have to repeat this for each
partition. Now you need to change /etc/lilo.conf so that LILO boots
from hdb1 instead.

Mounting a Zip Disk

I am using Red Hat 5.1 and am having some difficulty mounting
a Zip disk formatted in Windows 98. The file system is not FAT32;
it is FAT16. I can easily mount a Linux EXT2 Zip, but not the
Windows 98 one. I'm not sure if I have the relevant information in
my FSTAB—maybe someone can tell me what I need. I've used commands
like:

mount -t msdos

I've tried many variations of this with no success. Is there
something I'm missing? The man mount help seems
informative, but yields no solutions —Edward Heshka,
heshka@idirect.com

The default partition used on a Zip disk under DOS/Windows is
the fourth partition. Don't ask me why! Add entries similar to
these to your /etc/fstab:

Make sure the mount points exist and you use the
correct SCSI device. Check the messages during bootup if you're not
sure. Now you can mount a DOS Zip disk with
mount /zipdos and an EXT2 Zip disk
with mount /zip.

Sharing Directories

I'm fairly new to Linux. I have succesfully installed Red Hat
Linux 5.1 on my laptop and have configured X appropriately. I have
made appropriate network settings and I want to use network shares
(i.e., directories) that exist in my company's Windows NT domain.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Also, we use MS
Exchange for our e-mail and I have had limited success in
configuring a POP3 client to hit the server. Thanks in
advance. —William B. Winslow, bill.winslow@atkearney.com

One word: SAMBA. You can find information on SAMBA
at http://www.samba.bst.tj/samba/samba.html. Also, read the review
in Linux Journal of John Blair's
book SAMBA: Integrating UNIX and Windows to see
if it is a resource you are interested in using.